Yellow Lantern - A Reflection

Yellow.  The colour of fear.  The antithesis of will.  The ying to a Green Lantern's yang.  The reflection in the mirror.

So who was the first Yellow Lantern?

Why, Sinestro of course!  Any half decent comic book fan can tell you that.  And yes, in a sense he was.  After all, Thaal Sinestro has been wielding a yellow power ring since Green Lantern #9 (vol.2) way back in 1961. But he was not the first DC character to wear the uniform of Yellow Lantern.

That honour goes to the Bizarro analogue of Green Lantern who appeared in Superman #379 (1983) and was a member of the Justice League from the suitably bizarre planet Htrae.

The Bizarro Green Lantern was created by Superman's crystaline counterpart using a warped duplicator ray.  In #379 the inhabitants of the strange world began to explode without explanation.  For those of you who are on the edge of your seat over this mystery, it transpired that an ugly giant space cloud was feeding on the Bizarros' energies.  The day was eventually saved when Earth's very own Superman joined forces with a good Bizarro Lex Luthor (opposites remember!) to defeat the creature.  The exploded Bizarros including Yellow Lantern and the Justice League pop back into existence and all's well that ends well.

With the 'Crisis On Infinite Earths' our cowardly hero was retconned out of continuity but a good idea is hard to put down and when the cube shaped planet Htrae is born again into the new DC universe, Geoff Johns and Richard Donner weren't long in writing the yellow clad Bizarro Lantern back into the pages of Action Comics.

Of course, this time the creature wasn't the only ring slinger around sporting a black and yellow jumpsuit.  With Johns on the scene it wasn't long before this new iteration of the character was recruited into the fear worshipping Sinestro Corps.  Perhaps not their most successful warrior but for us readers he is the unsung inspiration of them all.